The CBLR Project Blog

This will be the final blog of my quarter, and it is going to be the CBLR project blog. For those of you don’t really know what CBLR is, the CBLR is stands for Community Base Learning and Research, and the project is which student will partner with a local organization and participate on a project of interest to that organization and student themselves. 

I have been working with the organization called EarthCorps throughout this quarter.

EarthCorps is a non-profit organization located in Seattle, Washington. Its mission is to develop leaders to strengthen community and restore the health of our environment. For their goal, Of course is to see our environment as healthy as possible, and seeing more and more people joining them. So, if you are interested about it, you are always welcome to join them as a volunteer, or you can take a yearlong leadership training program with them to be a member of the Corps. EarthCorps brings together passionate and hardworking young adults from the US and countries around the world, for the training program. Again, if you are interested, then please feel free to sign up for the volunteer on the EarthCorps Calendar website. And here's the link.

https://www.earthcorps.org/volunteer/calendar/

Sean is the Staff in EarthCorps that I interacted with for the whole process of the CBLR project. He helped me a lot to get this project done because I was late to sign up the volunteer work at the beginning of the quarter, and he placed me to work with the EarthCorps, and he also did the evaluation of my work. He is always here to answer my questions about the project while I was still confusing about it. In my opinion, I think those interactions at the organizational level that are significant for college students were essential because they help student getting the idea and lead them to the right direction for the project.

I was involved in 4 events to get a total of 16 hours of partnership work for my project. The first one was taken place in the Lake Hills Greenbelt on Nov 11,2018. What I was doing with this event is to plant trees and shrubs during the rainy season. For the second event, it’s the Green Kirkland Day at Everest Park on Nov 17, 2018. It is also a planting trees and shrubs work. The third event was taken place in the Hutt Park in Edmonds on Nov 24/2018. This event was a little bit different from the first two. It was an event to remove the aggressive weeds from the park. For the last one, it was an event called (Union Slough Salt Marsh: Everett) on Dec 08,2018, and it took place at Union Slough wetland in Everett. It was an event doing both planting and removing aggressive weeds. I worked 4 hours for each of the events.

Removing English Ivy

There are actually two memorable learning moments from the events. The first one was happened in the third event, which was in the Hutt Park in Edmonds. There were around 16 to 18 volunteers that day, and we were spending the whole four hours on removing the aggressive weeds from the park. It is pretty memorable for me because I had been planting trees and shrubs for a total of eight hours from the first and second event, and I finally got new stuff to learn and work with. The plant I was removing is called English Ivy (Hedera helix). It is a non-native plant and it's also an aggressive vine that would engulf a tree or shrubs if we leave it alone. It can grow up to 40 ft long. You could find it near the tree or shrubs. And there is another reason that I found this experience memorable, and it is because the Ivy smells really bad.

The second memorable learning moment was happened in the last event in the Union Slough wetland in Everett. It is a beautiful place that with a lake beside the working area. There are few things that are memorable about the ecosystem of this place. The first thing is the area where we plant the trees and shrubs is kind of tough because it is close to the lake, and the soil is turning to mud which you can see it on the picture at the right. The second thing is there are lots of Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus aremeniacus) around the work place. It is also a non-native specie like the English Ivy. And its also an aggressive vine that could engulf a tree or shrubs. It could grow up to 30 ft long. To remove it, you have to be careful because it have stings on the vine. The third thing and it is the thing that inspiring me the most, the place that I worked at is a straight road with a lake beside it. Our job is to clear all the aggressive weeds and plant new trees and shrubs through the road. This road is about a mile long, and we only got four volunteer on that day. For sure, we can't get it all done by that day because we were lack of volunteer, and we couldn't do much.

The CBLR project helps me know about what's happening in our ecosystem. And we have to do something with it, if not, the species will just getting less and less. For personal, I think this experience could gain knowledge about plant species, and I learnt how to keep our ecosystem healthy from this experience. For example, I could figure out which is the aggressive weeds and could help the tree stay healthy. And remember, always ask when you something not clear or don't understand, and it can help you get through lots of challenges. So far I think the CBLR project is a really good idea, its good for both the organization and the Student. Like I said, the ecosystem needs our help, and the organization like EarthCorps can't do much. To cooperate with the school is the most effective way to gather more volunteers for help. And the student could learn more about our own planet.